Keeping our eyes focused on GOD.

Well, what do we do to keep our minds, our hearts, our eyes, focused on what matters?  I listen to my Christian playlist on YouTube.  It helps me remember that whatever happens in this life, we belong to GOD.  Salvation matters more.  Heaven is the goal.  And suffering happens to every life.

I can't remember how many songs I started with.  I had one main music list and decided I needed to have the Christian songs separate.  Now I have a Christian playlist and one called "Other Favorites," which has anything not considered Christian in nature.  My old favorites.

I have 73 songs on my Christian list right now.  I haven't decided how many is enough.  I listen to them on automatic replay... all day, all night, sometimes for more than 24 hours.  It depends on what the days are like.

I usually play them in order, and know what song comes next.  Lately I have been doing the song shuffle.  It changes the order.  Makes it random, kind of.

Every now and then I search for new songs to add.

I'm thinking of making different lists for Christian listening.

Sometimes, lately, I turn on my small radio and listen to a pre-tuned Christian station.  When I first set it up, I think I left it on for two entire days.

All this is background music.  I go about my day with this music playing.  It is amazing how certain songs come up when I am in range of the device I have on.  

There are old Christian songs I haven't found yet.

I think about life without money, without electricity, without the internet.  I think of people who would destroy everything we care about.  I wonder how to save these treasures of our lives.  I can't imagine my life without music.

If God had blessed my efforts, I was going to collect as many as possible from the Body of Christ, sort them, create a library of them, find a way to make themed playlists... like worship, prayer, family, dancing (?), and whatever other lists that come up.  It was meant to be a way to save and protect and replay the best of our history in music.  

I remember the lessons of history where all the books were burned.  Now we have the internet as a single consuming source for all our information... with censorship, hacking, and altering the details.  It's not much different than burning books.  Easier, actually.  And no one really knows what has been changed unless they are an authority. 

We are heading into the rule of the Antichrist.  Imagine what he will do to our history.

This battle has been going on for all of life here on earth.  It's a spiritual war, with unseen warriors on both sides.

What will we do?  I don't know.

I remember the part in the Bible where the Jews found the scriptures again and it was read aloud to the people.  I wondered how they lived before it was found again.  I wondered what God did in the years when their Bible was not available.  I wondered how they might be judged in the future judgment we all face... except the martyrs.

Keeping our focus on God can be very hard without daily reminders.  We get busy with our needs.  Slowly we forget about God and what He has told us.  It is a tool of the Enemy to keep us from His Word... slowly getting it out of our lives, our focus, our world.

What can we do in these last days before the Antichrist rises and destroys us?  Who will still be left?  How will they remember all the things we have learned over the many years of out lives?  How will God keep Himself alive in their daily existence?

I wonder if there is anything we can do to leave our history in ways and places they might be able to find it....  We are becoming a 100% surveillance world.  Will there be any hope to reach anyone that lives beyond us?  

I really don't know.  I imagine the forces of Satan will have kept a record and will destroy all our efforts.

A world without godly people is not going to be a good place to live.

 

FAITH FRIDAY :: 8OCT2021 - Watching Some Christian Movies

 I seem to find my movies on YouTube now... since I decided to pay for no-ads every month.  It is so great... I hope I can afford it until I die!  haha  I guess it's my entertainment budget, but it is also a research tool and income tool someday.

I am getting to the point where I have watched most of the ones that come up on my feed.  I don't know how that equals what is available.  I tend to go through spurts of movie watching... most of the time on my Sabbath time, or the weekends.

In the search for a decent movie, I end up clicking on some that are very bad in terms of content.  There isn't a real way to decide what a movie will have in it when it's on YouTube.  And I sometimes wonder if it's not a good thing to watch them if I have no idea where they are sourced from.

I find it's an ongoing battle for me.  No answers yet.  

Hallmark movies come up all the time. Tonight I checked on one that was called a Hallmark movie but it wasn't.  It turned out to be an R rated movie.  I found out when I searched for the title on a new page.  This seems to be a tool of the Enemy... trying to deceive with false information.  I don't always find out before I start watching, but this time I did.

It is always a question for me because it directly relates to my faith and the choices I keep trying to make to honor GOD more with my life.  These battles get worse as my desire to honor GOD gets bigger.  I wonder how to deal with hidden "temptations" that become sins if we don't fight them.

What the digital age has brought to us is algorithms that can be manipulated to force on us things we would never choose on our own... including those terrible ads that are pushed on us at every website.  I can't afford to pay every website to remove the ads from my view.  So, how do we deal with the new future of our world?

I don't know.

It is the ongoing topic in my prayers and seeking GOD for answers.  Morality is a big thought in my head and heart these days... and it will get even bigger as the world grows darker.

In terms of wanting to build a Christian Community through Working Together, the need to decide about these problems is important.  There are technical issues to consider... security, content, costs... how do we function as Christians in a global internet world if we are attached to the world by our "internet provider?"  There's no way to build our own system, other than a small community in a defined space... by acres, by houses, by location.

I don't know what would be possible for us as we work to survive a world leading up to the Antichrist.

Plus, what do we do now... this is the time when the internet is growing to cover the world.  When the gospel is shared with every person, it will fulfill prophecy.

I guess I keep doing battle with the idea of how to live without the internet, without YouTube, without all the growing necessities of contact through the internet.  I have movies that are VHS and DVD.  As long as I have a device to watch them on, I can still enjoy movies... the ones without too much dirt in them.  

I have some that are not fully clean, that are violent, that are not about godly topics, etc.  I don't watch them all the time, but I want them as a reference...  Are they choosing to sin?  I suppose they are.  I'm not yet able to decide if I MUST get rid of them.  Will it cause GOD to reject me?  

I can't recall all the titles I have right now, but some in this category might be Hotel Rwand - about the genocide of a people group. Maybe Waterworld - about a man becoming a fish creature as a testament to evolution.  Anything with profanity, violence, crime, sex, lying, nudity, or other sinful things.

In listening to music I face the same problems.

I am going through my belongings again, trying to downsize the the very least amount of possessions I can.  I say downsizing to the things I still want to have when I die, for whatever reasons.  My treasures have changed in that new definition.

How do we make our lives holy in a world like ours?  What does GOD expect of us?  Are we a true example to others when we haven't eliminated all these questionable possessions from our daily lives?  Can we even control what is pushed on us - like the ads we are forced to see in our emails, on search results, etc.?

If you have some answers, please share them with me so I can think about them.  I am still searching for answers I can believe in.

In Christ,  Deb  <3